Month: November 2016

Sorry for a while. 

Hi all, 

Sorry for not posting anything for a few days. Unfortunately, it will be a little bit longer before I will be posting anything else. I do have a bit of RB translated, but I will have to decide whether I want to post the translations in shorter segments from now on. having such a long chap is a bit inconvenient especially ATL. Well we’ll see what I decide. Thanks! 

Secondo Korean 

Raid Breaker Vol. 1 Ch. 6 (Complete)

Hi all,

Thanks for reading the translation!  I just wanted to start off this page with a sharing something with the readers.  As many of you know, I am new to translating “hobby,” if you want to call it that.

As this is a hobby that is done on the side in order to improve my Korean that I have lost quite a bit, and if the readers want to bless me with a donation, I will gladly take it and will thank you for it.

There has been some concern regarding quality of my translation in the areas of lack of editing….or horrible editing….and perhaps horrible translating.  Whatever the case, here is something many of you do not know.  What a lot of stories/novels that other translators, me included, are translating are “light novels.”  A light novel is something that was meant to be read where it is read “lightly,” without much thought or concerns or whatever you may want to put here.  These are lite-reading materials.  In other words, these are not meant to be read like we would read best sellers or Nobel Prize level book or whatever.

As such, even the qualities of these novels are such that grammars or punctuations are not the highlight of the books.  What many of you do not know is that the raws actually have many grammatical errors as well as punctuation errors.  Yes, the actual raw books!

You see many translation sites that have editors that dot all the ‘i’s’ and cross all the ‘t’s’ with respect to grammar, tense, and punctuation, and what results are easy read high quality stories that you all are used to reading.  In other words, the quality of the writing gets improved from the original when these are translated.

The problem with this is that many of you have become used to this “higher” quality story that such is expected of all the translators.

I am not one of those translators.  In fact, after all that has been said and done, it may be even possible that my quality is worse than the original…not that I shoot for that, but I try to keep the translation/my work to the true sense of what we are reading, which is a “light novel” that is meant to be read, pretty much, only for the story content and not for the grammatical, tense, and punctual content.

Now I understand that people appreciate the reading experience that is smooth and fluid, but I don’t think that such has to be the benchmark of translation.

The basic purpose of translation is to enable those that can’t read Korean to be able to enjoy the same story that other Koreans are enjoying…have been enjoying.  With that said, in my mind, editing for correctness is not that high up my priority list.

So the story changes from past tense to present tense sporadically and inappropriately.  Like I have said, many of the light novels ARE written like that, and in other cases, after translator translates, has failed to make it concurrent.  Does this take away from the story? I don’t think it does.

What about leaving out “the’s” and “a’s” and other supportive words?  I don’t think these take away from the story either.

So for the pure aspect of relaying a story, which is what translating is…a relaying a story from raw speaking to English speaking, I don’t think such hinders it.

Again, much of raws are already flawed in such way because of the authors themselves…because such enables them to tell their story without difficulty.  This also helps authors write quickly, as they don’t have to spend time to organize for grammar, punctuation, fluidy, and other literary tools (that I am totally ignorant of).

So the bottom line is that I really only care about the story…that it is translated and organized “enough” that the story is passed on to the readers like you all.  My goal is not to improve the quality of the novel that authors themselves didn’t bother doing/worrying about.  My goal is simply relaying of the story.  If the reading experience is a bit rough, I am sorry, but if it is rough, it isn’t too rough, as compared to machine translations without editing done on them.

Now, I am not saying I will not edit at all, because I do edit them…just not as extensively as others.  If this fact makes the readers angry, I apologize, but I will not be able to help you, as I was not forcing you to come read my translation.  I would be grateful if you were to read them, but I am not forcing you to read them.  I wish that you will continue to visit and enjoy these stories, but if you choose to not…I will understand.  It is not a big deal.  We have many things to worry about in this world to be getting all hot and bothered by little things as this….as this is only a light novel.

So this ends my very long two cents!

Please enjoy the STORY!    Secondo Korean

Translation Resumes Here

Hi all,

Due to certain circumstances, I am back to my own site.  As I have stated before, I will be translating one novel of each ATL and RB a week, but we all know that things happen.  As such translations may be delayed.

Translations that were posted on Myoniyoni are no longer there so the readers will have to access them here.  Simply go to the novel page.

Thank you

Secondo Korean

Ark the Legend Vol. 16 Ch. 6

Hello all,

This is my first time translating a novel, and even though Korean is my native language, I am very rusty.  As such, it took me quite a while in translating this one chapter!  I certainly hope the time it takes me to translate will shorten real soon.

As for the translation itself….

I am sure previous translator and I will probably spell or pronounce certain words differently, and perhaps, will choose to use different words during translation.  I wish I could say I have the time to go back and make sure I use the same words or phrases, but I really do not have that kind of time.  With that said, I hope you will not mind!  🙂

Here is the chapter: Nosferatu